A Driving Factor in Mobility? Transportation's Role in Connecting Subsidized Housing and Employment Outcomes in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Program

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We evaluate the role of transportation in improving the employment outcomes of participants in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing Voucher Program, a 10-year demonstration project designed to enable low-income families to improve their outcomes by moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods. We use longitudinal data from the MTO program to assess the role of transportation—automobiles and improved access to public transit—in moving to, and maintaining, employment. We use multi-nomial logistic regression to predict changes in employment status as a function of change in automobile availability and transit accessibility, controlling for other potential determinants of employment. We find that keeping or gaining access to an automobile is positively related to the likelihood of employment. Improved access to public transit is positively associated with maintaining employment, but not with job gains. Although we cannot say for certain whether car ownership preceded or followed employment, it is clear that having a car provides multiple benefits that facilitate getting and keeping a job.

Takeaway for practice: Policies to increase automobile access among low-income households—even in dense urban areas—will most clearly enhance job gain and job retention. While auto programs are unpopular with many planners, they would improve the lives of low-income families who currently have the least access to cars. In addition, supporting moves to transit-rich neighborhoods may help households maintain consistent employment.

Keywords:

• Moving to Opportunity
• automobile access
• public transit access
• housing vouchers
• employment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Regina Gray (HUD), the co-investigators on the project, Rolf Pendall (The Urban Institute) and Casey Dawkins (University of Maryland), Michael Smart (Rutgers), and the anonymous referees. Any errors are the responsibility of the authors.

Notes

1 For example, in recent years, HUD and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) have collaborated—in an unprecedented fashion—to better integrate transportation, housing, and employment, with the end goal of creating more ``economically sustainable and livable communities" (HUD and DOT 2010). The listing of FY2011 Sustainable Communities Grantees (http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id = FY2011RegGrantees_noDist.pdf) includes numerous references to transportation, particularly efforts to improve the linkage between affordable housing and public transit. Not a single grantee lists efforts to increase low-income households’ access to automobiles.

2 We tested the sensitivity of the model by including part-time jobs in a more broad definition of employment as the dependent variable; the model results are consistent with the figures reported for full-time employment.

3 For a more extensive description of these data, see Tomer, Kneebone, Puentes, and Berube's (2011) Appendix 1, Technical Methodology. We also experimented with other sources of transit data, including a transit availability index from the Federal Highway Administration, but found the Brookings data to be superior.

4 Data on employment and car ownership are also available in the final survey, but missing data and nonresponses from this survey round would have cut the usable sample to a maximum of 2,400 participants. This level of attrition was deemed problematic and thus the final survey data were not used in this analysis.

5 A handful of studies show that access to public transit is positively associated with employment among households without cars (Kawabata, 2003; Ong & Houston, 2002; Sanchez, 1999; Yi, 2006). Therefore, in a separate model, we examined the relationship between public transit and employment for participants without automobiles. The sample size is reduced by less than one-fifth, since so few households had cars at baseline. Similar to the full model, transit—as measured by both self-reported bus access and households moving to neighborhoods with better service between baseline and interim—has a large positive impact on keeping employment. Improved public transit also has a negative but nonsignificant effect on gaining employment.

6 The studies on the relationship between vehicle asset limitations and ownership are mixed. For example, Nam (2008) finds no relationship between more generous vehicle asset limits and vehicle ownership.